It all began one cold day of December. School had finally ended
and I was getting prepared to enjoy the time I had before I had
to go back and stand the last years of high school before going
to some random university. I ended up studying arts in the
University of Cardiff, some long and fairly useless 20 or so
months. Not long ago, I was obligated to drop out, for the
reasons that I'm about to tell you. The day had gone through in a
normal fashion. I had been sleeping a lot and playing videogames
like never before, then, at about 7 o clock, I turned on my
computer and logged in onto Facebook. I tried to get comfortable
with a white blanket over me and, as I scrolled down the news
feed, i noticed a picture of a forty-something year old man,
dressed in military clothes and with a typical blue background. I
only recognized him after I saw the name of the one who uploaded
the picture. Fabrice Bennett, a small kid from my class. A clever
kid never liked by our other classmates, come to think of it, I
was one of his very few "friends"... and we barely even spoke to
each other. For what we all knew, he had autism, or a sickness of
the sort. He was a year younger than all of us yet he still got
higher grades than anyone ever had on the history of my school.
He used to like to talk about his parents a lot. Both his parents
were in the military. His father began working as a normal
soldier, and then ended up helping with military research,
accompanied by his wife, a chemical engineer. He was the man I
saw in the picture. I met Mr.Bennett one day when he and his wife
drove to school to pick up Fabrice. Mr.Bennett waited at the
front door with a very serious look on his face, and then his
expression changed to some sort of relief when he noticed that I
wasn't one of those kids that "bullied" his son. Just before we
could introduce ourselves properly, Fabrice ran unto his father's
arms and they walked together towards the car, where his mother
was waiting for them.

At first, I didn't notice what creeped me out about the picture,
but then I noticed that it wasn't really the picture, but its
description. It was made very clear that the boy was scared and
worried. Repeated along the description, there was the phrase
"Where is my father?!". Apparently his father hadn't been seen
since the night before. Nothing but one or two commentaries
asking more information about what happened made me feel even
sorrier for Fabrice. Many questions began to run through my head.
What could've happened to Mr.Bennet? Why would he simply post it
on Facebook? Had he already called the proper authorities? What
was I supposed to do? This last question is the one that became
quickly became the most relevant. I decided that I would try to
contact him. I sent a couple of messages and emails, but after
waiting for one or two hours, I had no response whatsoever. It
was already getting late, or at least that's how it felt, so I
quickly grabbed my phone and called him. No response either. I
felt a little worried at first, but then I remembered that I have
never felt such sadness, so I wouldn't know how Fabrice
(especially Fabrice) would react to this situation. At about 11 o
clock, I decided to go to sleep.

That same night, I had one of the worst nightmares ever. The
nightmare started out rather abruptly. I stood on the middle of a
dark room, panting and trying to get some air. My face hurt
badly, and I couldn't keep my hands still. They kept shaking and
shaking and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Then I realized that I was scared of something, I just didn't
know precisely what. When I was finally conscious in my dream,
nightmare, I looked at my shaking hands, realizing that they were
dripping warm blood, and then I raised them and tried to wash
some tears and sweat off my face. That's when I realized why I
was scared. My face hurt because I had an exaggerated smile on my
face, a smile that was literally damaging my facial muscles. Then
I began to feel that my eyes where aching and my eyelids began to
move randomly. Then, right before I could scream at the emptiness
that surrounded me, I woke up, sweating in my bed. I began to
look around my dark empty room, while hearing some very faint
voices. I began to touch my face. My mouth, my cheeks, my eyes,
everything was normal, except for the rivers of sweat of course.
It took me about an hour to ignore the never-ending whispers
around me, then I fell asleep again and I never had that
nightmare again.

The next morning, I woke up at noon, and I began to call out for
my parents, wondering why they hadn't woken me up. I thought of
my nightmare and I almost began to cry, assuming the worst.
Thankfully, they were simply on the garage, cleaning up. Then I
remembered… I was meeting with some friends that day.

I showered, had lunch, and immediately went to my friend
Charlie's house, where we had planned to eat pizza with a group
of around 5 friends, then maybe watch a movie or play Halo. We
had a lot of fun that day, and just before we all decided to
leave, I quickly brought up the subject of Fabrice's dad
disappearance. Most of my friends acknowledged that they had seen
the picture of Mr.Bennett the day before, and although I didn't
think they would care the least, they did seem pretty worried
about it. Then, Charlie mentioned that the story had given him
nightmares. We all instantly looked at each other. We all had
fear in our faces, that's when we knew that we all had had the
same nightmare. It took me a few seconds just to say that my
nightmare consisted in me being alone in a dark room. Then each
of them complemented the story by saying things that I didn't
remember at that moment, for example I didn't remember that I was
wearing my pajamas in the dream, or that my hands, besides
shaking, they were also hurting badly. We all felt very intrigued
by this amazing coincidence and we ended up leaving Charlie's
house wondering what the hell had happened. The next day, very
early, I got a call from Charlie. He spoke softly as if he were
trying to avoid anyone else to hear him. He also spoke very
slowly, trying to choose his words very well. Apparently, the
night before, he had walked towards Fabrice's house as soon as we
all left. I didn't know it, but they lived just 5 or 6 blocks
away from each other. How he knew where Fabrice lived is
something that still puzzles me. But I digress. He told me that
he had decided to visit Fabrice and ask him about what happened.
As soon as he got closer to Fabrice's house, he began to hear
different voices a few feet away, and then he noticed that the
ones talking were a group of police men. Fabrice's house was
surrounded by many police men and police cars. He approached a
police officer and asked him what had happened. The whole Bennett
family had been found murdered around the house. They had all
been dead for a little more than 2 days. Blood had been spread
everywhere, and it all seemed to be Mr. Bennett's fault. He had
grabbed a kitchen knife and murdered his wife about half an hour
after they had gone to bed. She had many long deep cuts all over
her body, and her body was found hanging from an open door. His
son, Fabrice, on the other hand, had been woken up, taken to the
basement, and been tortured all night, until his father finally
got sick of his crying and whining, and stabbed him many times in
the stomach. Finally, Mr.Bennett stood next to his dead child,
cut himself a dozen times in the face, and then he stabbed it
until he finally dropped dead. It was a total mess. I'm not
really sure if the police officer was supposed to give out this
information, still that's what I was told, and much later, it was
pretty much confirmed by our teachers and classmates.

That was the story for a few years, a man who had suddenly gone
insane and killed his family for no reason, then not long ago ,
Charlie ( who I met again by pure chance) told me something new
about the Bennett case, a little detail that had been kept from
all of us. A digital camera had been found along with the bodies
in the basement. A friend of Charlie's got into the police and
found the video...something like that, I don't remember. He began
to tell me about what the camera contained. Many pictures and
videos of family trips, barbecues, picnics, and a video showing
the torture that poor Fabrice had gone through. The video showed
exactly how Mr. Bennett punched, stabbed, spit and insulted his
own kid, but the problem with the video was that Mr.
Bennett...was barely recognizable. A big disgusting smile
occupied half of his face, and yes, his eyelids were moving up
and down randomly and his eyes moved around their sockets like if
he had a seizure. As his father looked at the camera, waving his
knife and arms, it could easily be heard Fabrice' voice in the
background, asking in tears "Who are you?", "Why are you doing
this?"; "Where is my father?". As he told me the details of the
video, I remembered the picture and my dream again. They both
still bring fear to my heart. I left Charlie and ran towards a
restaurant so I could have a drink and think everything through.
That same night, I had a nightmare, not the same one I had the
night when I saw the picture, but in this one I could see the
murders through Mr.Bennett's eyes. I cannot lie about it; I enjoy
it, I like to hear the screams and the sound of the knife peeling
away the skin. But when that first nightmare ended, I woke up
still hearing the screams, the pledges, the begging. Everywhere I
go now I keep hearing them, and once in a while, I'll have that
nightmare again. I had to try to make it stop, I had to leave
because of this "curse" this, "obsession", I don't know. I can
hear it right now! It's the same voice all the time, crying,
asking over and over, "Where is my Father?".